Web Designer, Media and Tech Lover

Why I Am Being Forced By VirginMedia’s New Spying Tactic Cview DPI To Encrypt My Overall Internet Connection

Christmas should be a time of joy for most people but if you are a VirginMedia subscriber like myself their latest attack on your privacy will bring very few Ho Ho Ho’s from customers. VirginMedia have recentley admitted to testing out CView a DPI “Deep Packet Inspection” system that looks and opens your Internet activity/traffic to substantiate if you are downloading or uploading copyrighted music content. Not only is this interception technique most probably illegal it is also a deception and monitoring feature that many uneducated/tech savvy VirginMedia customers will be unaware is taking place on their Internet connection.

First of what exactly is Deep Packet Inspection in lehmans terms everyone can understand.

One of the best examples for non tech savvy ViginMedia Internet users is this example below.

A friend John posts a sealed confidential letter to you via the royal mail, once the letter enters the royal mail postal system the royal mail then open John’s confidential letter read it’s contents then forward it onto it’s intended recipient. All this happens without the recipients or Johns knowledge that his privacy and confidentiality has been compromised.

The trial of CView Deep Packet Inspection, which will cover approximately 40 percent of Virgin Media customers has be unlawfully introduced as customers will not be notified or have an opt-in or opt-out option. The reason I state unlawfully introduced is that fact that the current RIPA [Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act] and PECR [Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations] legislation states that any interception of media communications in the UK must either be performed with the written consent of the customer/subscriber or alternatively through an acquired court warrant, neither of which VirginMedia have obtained or are attempting to obtain. The said RIPA legislation makes it illegal to intercept any communication traffic without consent or warrant and covers both human and machine interception techniques equally, even if the source of the data intercepted has been made anonymous the interception crime has still taken place in the eyes of the law a fact VirginMedia either choose to ignore or mistakenly think they have found a loophole for.

Now you may be thinking that if your not doing anything that could be considered illegal in law with your Internet connection you have nothing to worry about right? Wrong.

Any traffic that is transferred by you that looks like P2P protocol traffic will be compromised by VirginMedia which could include VOIP traffic and legal Bittorrent traffic, I for one use Bittorrent for legal purposes when writing music and collaborating with other musicians on-line thus my confidential and self copyrighted content will be scanned/compromised by VirginMedia’s implementation of the CView system. Another point in question is that BBC iPlayer’s HD streams will soon be using a version of P2P/Bittorrent technology to deliver their High Definition program content, this content would also be scanned by VirginMedia as the technology is not intelligent enough to tell the difference between legal and so called illegal P2P traffic/activity it scans and intercepts it all regardless.

VirginMedia has since countered argued that “there are exceptions [in RIPA] for network management purposes.” That in itself is somewhat of a grey area because network management typically refers to QoS and traffic routing for specific services (e.g. web browsing etc.). To argue that it also covers the act of inspecting/spying on customers’ activity is untested and highly debateable.

After contacting VirginMedia multiple times and trying to find out more information as to whether my area is subject to this trial I have managed to find out nothing at all, their support services don’t even know this trial is in place and more to the point don’t have a clue as to what CView DPI is. This isn’t a huge surprise to me as Virgin’s support is largely clueless at the best of times on many subjects which is probably caused by their outsourcing of support staff who receive four weeks training before going live, most of this training simply includes billing queries and up-selling techniques with no real knowledge of company procedures being taught. Therefore calling support services to question them on this matter will be a fruitless effort so don’t even bother trying unless you want the standard “I don’t understand your question” and are asked to be transfered to technical support at a cost of 50p per minute. VirginMedia’s Technical and so called Twitter support also have no answerers or simply decline to answer questions on this subject either so it’s a complete waste of your time trying.

After failing to receive any answers on this subject from VirginMedia as to whether the trial of CView is operational within my area i have decided the only steps left for me to take are these below.

1. Encrypt all my Internet outgoing Internet traffic.
2. Contact my local MP and Police Office and present all information and legalities on the subject.
3. Meet with several media lawyers and present the information to get views on legality of what can be considered a form of wire tapping.

I haven’t bothered to contact ofcom this time as the last time I dealt with ofcom over VirginMedia falsely advertising unlimited access/downloads on their website due to traffic management policy ofcom’s reply was very much disappointing. ofcom are also one of the agencies pushing for DPI to be present on all UK ISP’s.

So why Encrypt all my Internet traffic well this statement from a spokesman related to the new Virgin ISP spying project notes that, “encryption of the data packet would defeat us.”

To sum up I thought it was best to leave the last word to Alaxander Hanff who worded it so eloquently.

Alexander Hanff, speaking on his blog, https://nodpi.org/ said:

“So I am laying the cards on the table – how much is your privacy worth – in fact lets go all out, how much is the privacy of your kids and their kids, and their kids kids and so on. Because make no mistake – once we go down this path there is no going back. What happens now will impact every generation to follow – we are responsible for safeguarding the future of private communications.

So I ask again, how much is it worth? £5.00 a month? £10.00? You want my answer? It is truly priceless. I buried someone today, they would have done anything to guarantee the liberty of my son – their grandson, you can’t put a material value on that.

Leave Virgin Media.

Act now and you could save this country from seriously going to the dogs, fail to act and in 5 years time you will see see you no longer have a choice.”